Verulam Writers' Circle

The Early Years

by Joan Rice

This year, 2004, the Verulam Writers' Circle is celebrating its 50th anniversary and as a founder member, I have been asked to share my memories of those early days. I have been trying to discover when the Society was actually founded: the exact date has so far eluded me but I have found proof to confirm my conviction that its existence has been longer than fifty years. No such early club records exist but by trawling through my late husband's diaries, I read that the Rice family left for a nine month stay in Japan on 15th January 1955, returning to England on 1st September of the same year. By that departure date I had been a member of the Circle, certainly for one year, quite likely for more, a fact confirmed by two other entries in my husband's diaries. On the 9th September 1955 he wrote "8.15 pm - Joan - Writers' Circle" and on the 20th April 1954 "Joan, Circle meeting at Popefield" (the name of our then house). This was then followed by an entry the next day, Wednesday 21st reading " Joan to Circle at Radlett". The Tuesday meeting at my home must have been a committee meeting, since we met only once a fortnight. I next did a trawl of his 1953 and 1952 diaries. 1953 revealed nothing about the Circle but he was travelling abroad a great deal that year. "Wednesday 23rd July 1952" however contains an entry "Joan needs car pm". We had only one car in those days, the Circle met on a Wednesday and I can think of only one reason for my expedition, to go to it.

Whatever the exact date, the Circle owes its existence to a Creative Writing class run by one Phillip Heather, then senior English master at the Abbey School. When the class ended, so popular had it been that it was decided to carry it on privately in the form of a Writers' Circle. The leading enthusiast was one Elizabeth Phillips, without whom the Circle would never have got off and stayed off the ground. She was then I suppose in her late thirties, small, dark, bursting with energy and enthusiasm, like most of us unpublished but determined to rectify that as soon as possible. She could be a shade overpowering at times in her determination to keep us frailer mortals up to scratch and doing what she wanted of us, but I became fond of her and mourned her tragically early death soon after her husband retired and they went to live in Eastbourne. When our paths first crossed however she was living in Radlett with husband and adopted daughter. I was given her telephone number by a fellow reader of a correspondence magazine for would be writers. My timing was fortunate, Elizabeth explained that the first meeting since the class had ended was about to take place and invited me along.

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I wish I could remember more clearly the names and faces of those I met that first evening. Lillian Brown must have been there, a long and faithful member who I think was responsible for introducing to the Circle one of its most successful members, Eileen Elias, now in her nineties and still writing. There was Joyce Rolph , small and quiet with a job on the local Council and a tiny flat into which the equally tiny Circle was able to squeeze.

There was Dorothy Korner, with a house in what became the Marshalswick area, and a Russian husband, the only Russian refugee, I used to tease his wife, who had failed to become a prince, or at least a duke, on leaving Russia. I suppose there were about eight of us, not all of whom stayed, like an untidy, rather grubby young man, a self-styled genius who left when we dared to criticise his masterpieces.

Our early evenings were all manuscript readings. Criticism was kindly on the whole but one learned to read between the lines. I certainly did. My early efforts were mostly of a tragic nature, gloom and doom pieces which smartly earned their rejection slips and which Circle members listened to with only tepid enthusiasm. Then one day I read them a light-hearted piece about my three sons and their feeding habits and members actually laughed: I was at last on the path to getting published in the Guardian, The Times Woman's Page, Woman's Hour, even Punch. I learned other lessons too from the Circle: how to be a committee member, so that in time I was commissioned by Pitmans to write a book "All About Clubs". I went to public speaking classes, gave talks to women's clubs and on radio and gave classes of my own on creative writing.

Other members from those early days had their successes too. Elizabeth contributed a cookery column to the Guardian followed by a cook book "Recipes from the Guardian", a copy of which I still treasure.

Other successful writers passed through our ranks, May Ivimy, founder of the Ver Poets, Frank Ferneyhough, Betty Puttick, Bernard Dumpeton and your present President, Gillian Thornton.

The Circle too, despite a few dips (at one time we were down to only one male member and how we cosseted him [Ted Rice? - no relative]. We enlarged our programme, we had speakers, competitions, one of which is held every year in memory of Elizabeth. We had an annual party. We soon outgrew meeting in each others' houses and went first to the Old Town Hall in St Albans until finally ending up here, at St Michael's Church hall in St Albans.

Whether it is 50 or 52 years old, the Circle is now a thoroughly professional organisation and one which I only wish Elizabeth Philips could be here to see.

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